Yarbrough: Be wary of for-profit charter schools

Yarbrough: Be wary of for-profit charter schools:

Yarbrough: Be wary of for-profit charter schools

Dick Yarbrough
yarb2400@bellsouth.net
March 17, 2012

At the risk of sounding like Johnny One-Note, let me go back over my concerns one more time about the charter school constitutional amendment bill in the state Senate that may or may not have been passed by the time this gets to you. (My deadlines and legislative deadlines don't always coincide.)
I don't have a problem with charter schools. In concept, charter schools are fine. My problem is that nobody seems to be talking about for-profit charter schools. That is a different matter.
Call me cynical, but you have to wonder why all the enthusiasm by legislators to promote charter schools while continuing to cut public school budgets and furlough teachers, particularly when the State Department of Education recently released a report saying that charter schools in Georgia don't perform as well as traditional public schools and their graduation rates are no better.
Legislators have gotten downright threatening with reluctant colleagues about charter schools and that just hasn't made much sense to me. If charter school performance is not that much better